The first story arc included in Radio Spirits’ Superman Last Son of Krypton collection was a 16 part saga about Clark’s spare costume being stolen and him teaming up with the Dynamic Duo to handle damage control before his secret identity is exposed. You can read my inital thoughts here. The second story is a lot heavier and it also gives me an opportunity to comment on the public service announcements that were run within the radio serial.
The Skin Game is quite a bit shorter, weighing in at only nine episodes. In this story, Jimmy Olsen is coaching an interracial neighborhood track and field team. Some kids from a rival team have come to Jimmy and the other coach asking them to kick their negro athletes off the team. “Cub reporter,” Jimmy Olsen tells the kids off, informing Ralph Mason he is a “lousy American.” Ralph’s Uncle George decides to change the rules himself. After setting a new record in 220, Howard Jones is congratulated by Jimmy and Clark Kent. As the starter pistol fires to being the next race, Jimmy is shot in the head. Luckily it was not a clean shot and Jimmy recovers swiftly in the hospital.
Metropolis’ finest enters the scene to prove themselves nothing more than horribly inept donut-eaters. The bungling stupidity of the cops was evident in the previous arc as well. Is it poor writing? Is it that cops don’t have to work as hard in a world populated by superheroes? Who knows, but it does make for some comic relief. In this case, the cops just assume the starter pistol was somehow loaded with a real bullet that happened to hit Jimmy even though it was aimed in the air. Right. Actually, Uncle George was aiming at Howard with his hunting rifle but missed when Jimmy walked in front of the shot.
The story relies very little on Superman’s powers, and more on Clark Kent’s determination to help his friend and ensure that all kids can participate in neighborhood athletics regardless of race. Like The Mystery of the Stolen Costume there are no super-villains, only misguided humans. The story has a few twists and turns, ultimately pointing out that Ralph’s father, John, is the real bad guy – George just takes things too far. John Mason swears he’s not a racial extremist since he employs 35 negroes in his factory. But his true nature is exposed as he describes to George why they should continue to keep black people feeling inferior – it makes them willing to work cheaper than white men. So is this story about greed or racism? Probably both, but racial equality is clearly the desired moral to be learned.
Racism isn’t an overly heavy topic for comic stories. It’s been handled many times in many different ways across the genre and continues to be addressed today. Most of the anti-prejudice stories we read today are much more subtle, however. What threw me off in this story is how different it was handled in 1948. The details of the American civil rights movement really begin with Rosa Parks in most history classes. But the battle was being fought before Rosa took her stand (or seat as the case may be) in Montgomery in 1955. You see, “separate but equal” was status quo until 1954 and was generally accepted through much of the country. Yet the producers of this radio show clearly had an agenda to push before at least six years before Brown v. Board of Education. Not only does the story address the cause of equality, but many of the PSAs that interject twice each episode hit the topic much more head on than anything we see today.
It was disconcerting to hear about racial and religious discrimination being discussed so bluntly. To a modern listener, such things almost seem impolite. While we have come a long way in the last 60 years, discrimination does still exist and is still handled in PSAs and other media, but it’s so much more subtle now. In some ways, I found their discussion of religious equality more groundbreaking than racial equality. Maybe that’s a product of our time as well. Religious extremists are having a sort of renaissance in America today, yet our knowledge of science has made it more clear that there is no biological separation of the races.
A final oddity from a modern perspective of this radio era equality message is the complete lack of sexual orientation being addressed. This is not surprising. The sexual revolution was still a decade or more away, and the gay rights activists weren’t included in that movement until near the very end. But in 2011, equal rights messages tend to include race, religion, creed, national origin, gender, and sexual orientation.
I’m a little torn on how to review The Skin Game. From a modern light, it’s almost offensive in its bluntness, and leaves out a message for an important minority contingent. But, looking at the story and surrounding PSAs from a 1948 perspective proves it to be very progressive and something our nerd culture should hold with pride. The story itself is very much a product of its time, but is also a moral we cannot afford to ignore in the 21st century.